An Enemy Cut to Fit — Finally a War That Uncle Sam Can Win
a military spoof by Mike Booth
It’s almost eight decades without winning a proper war — the Korean War ended in stalemate and Uncle Sam’s Iraq War leveled the Iraqui’s country but didn’t actually “win” the oil that Sam was lusting after. Now the United States has finally found an appropriate enemy and teamed up with a formidable ally to wage unlimited warfare against an opponent who offers them an opportunity for a victory on the field of battle. This event will justify two generations of multi-billion-dollar “defense” budgets which bankrupted their country and impoverished their citizens, both in incomes and public services. The U.S. military has finally found an adversary that they can meet, face to face, on the field of battle and achieve there a credibility that they couldn’t manage after fighting the Vietnamese peasants during almost two decades.
The Vietnamese didn’t field much technology and virtually no aviation, let alone anything like Uncle Sam’s fearsome B-52 mega-bombers which broke the record for tons of ordnance loosed on an enemy in wartime. Chalk up a dazzling success for a humble little jewel of a country against the would-be world hegemon. It wasn’t a cheap victory, however. It cost the Vietnamese communists some 1,100,000 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese fighters, as well as 2,000,000 civilians between North and South. But, in the end they sent Uncle Sam home with his helicopter between his legs.
After the Vietnam debacle the U.S. could not believe that they had been whipped, so, when the Russians were evicted from Afghanistan, Uncle Sam decided to step in to the next low-tech country and show those cowardly Russians how they should have subjugated the primitive Hindu Kush Himalayan tribesmen. That effort lasted 20 years, Sam’s longest war and ended… But let’s let President Joe Biden tell us what happened on the night that the American forces abandoned Bagram Air Base, some 50 kilometers north of the Afghan capital, Kabul, never to return. This is his account, according to the White House website:
“Last night in Kabul, the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan — the longest war in American history. We completed one of the biggest airlifts in history, with more than 120,000 people evacuated to safety. That number is more than double what most experts thought were possible. No nation — no nation has ever done anything like it in all of history. Only the United States had the capacity and the will and the ability to do it, and we did it today.”
This is my version of the same events in plain American English:
“United States troops cut and ran under cover of darkness last night after trying unsuccessfully for 20 years to subjugate the irregular Afghan army. The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University estimates that, since invading Afghanistan in 2001, the United States has spent $2.313 trillion on the war, which includes operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. For the United States Armed Forces to lose a war to Afghanistan is a remarkable feat, but to lose that war on that scale is a virtual miracle.
Now Uncle Sam sees an opportunity for a resounding victory, an event which will justify those decades of waste and humiliation, and restore the honor wrenched from them in Saigon and Kabul.
Will Sam never learn? His latest martial feat takes the cake. A group of tribesmen (sound familiar?) from Yemen, one of the most impoverished countries in the world, decided to show real solidarity with the besieged Palestinian civilians of Gaza, who were (and are) suffering unspeakable torture and death at the hands of the cream of the Israeli military and political crop. These tribesmen are the Houthis, and they were the first ones to launch missiles into Israel following the Israeli bombing and shelling campaign against defenseless Palestinian civilians in Gaza. They also declared — and enforced — a ban on all shipping traversing the Red Sea (their back yard) that might benefit Netanyahu’s IDF troops.
And they started turning ships around. The short-memoried Americans saw in this an opportunity to intervene and detailed a cohort of warships to the Red Sea, including the USS Dwight Eisenhower, one of their nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. The IKE was on the leading edge of Uncle Sam’s deterrent strategy worldwide, a fleet which they intend to build into ten or a dozen super carriers (though that number is theoretical and being cut back as we speak), capable of being dispatched to anyplace in the world. What better enemy for the Eisenhower to face down than a few camel jockeys and sheep herders? But the IKE didn’t last long in harm’s way. It was pulled out from potential engagement to a distant location in the Indian Ocean, a move which was explained as “normal mission rotation.”
It turned out to be not quite so simple. According to AP News (Apr. 3, 2024):
Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the head of U.S. Air Force Central, speaks at a news conference at the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Sept. 20, 2023. Grynkewich says Houthi rebels in Yemen may be running through their supplies of drone swarms and anti-ship ballistic missiles and the pace of their attacks has slowed a bit.
General Grynkewich, does his best to be optimistic, but he seems to lack intelligence. Since when does the U.S. Air Force operate on educated guesses, rather than solid military intelligence?
After months of grappling with the Houthis, with indifferent results, the American forces can now count on the assistance of their European NATO allies.
APnews.com, Apr. 9, 2024 — The Houthi campaign has continued despite more than two months of U.S.-led retaliatory airstrikes. “Just a single transit of one of our ships between the two larger distances to the area might take about 10 days, and also to cross the high-risk area takes almost two days,” Greek navy Rear Admiral Vasilios Gryparis, the commander of the mission, told reporters in Brussels on Monday.
He said the high-risk zone “has seen multiple attacks in the past months” ranging from threats and intimidation to “complex attacks” using “shore, air and sea-based assets, drones and ballistic missiles.” The Houthis showed extraordinary humane consideration. No one has been hurt. Nineteen of the 27 EU nations are involved in the mission but only four frigates are patrolling.
One is obliged to wonder, “Has the American/European joint battlefield prowess been punctured by a force of barefoot shepherds and fishermen? That downward spiral is about to change radically. President Biden has astutely joined forces with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his campaign against Israel’s enemies in Gaza, a force headed up, according to Israeli intelligence, by an informal formation of Palestinian grandmothers who direct their countrymen using unusual tactics. When they hear the approaching bombers the bold elderly women throw their own bodies on top of those of their grandchildren. This primitive-but-effective measure has saved the lives of many Palestinian babies and young children.
However, Netanyahu and Co. have developed effective counter measures which, they assure Uncle Sam, will put an end to the Palestinian grandmothers’ resistance, and they have invited the Americans to participate in the campaign. It consists, essentially, of Israeli bombers flying higher, so that the watchful grandmothers do not hear them approaching. Thus, the 500 and 2,000-pound American bombs have an excellent chance to strike the Palestinian tykes before their grandmothers can cover them.
The American armed forces finally have the opportunity to regain their battlefield credibility, and re-establish their military honor and clout, despite their recent humiliation at the hands of the Houthis and the Palestinian grand matriarchs. These Israeli/American tactics have use-by-date limitations, however, because the Houthis learn fast and strike hard. They have established their effectiveness against the world’s self-proclaimed greatest navy and air force. Now that Iranian hypersonic missiles — the aptly nicknamed “carrier busters” — have come into play, the Americans may soon be obliged to prove once again their mettle against the barefoot Houthis.
